NW

BY ZADIE SMITH (Hamish Hamilton £18.99)

Fans of Zadie Smith’s exuberant first novel White Teeth will be delighted to learn that her fourth returns to the same setting in North-West London. They mightn’t, however, be quite so delighted at what they find there.

Leah and Natalie, now in their mid-30s, grew up together on a local council estate. In the first section, seen through Leah’s guiltily envious eyes, Natalie seems to have the perfect life as a successful black lawyer. But then, through a long series of fragmented flashbacks, we realise that this progress has come at a cost…

As usual, Smith is shrewd and often very funny about people’s self-deceptions, while remaining generously sympathetic as to why they might need them.

Amid the current fashion for big London novels, it’s still in her work that you discover most about what it’s actually like to live there. Even so, too much of the book feels self-consciously literary, as if she hadn’t decided in advance how to tell the story and is experimenting somewhat anxiously as she goes along.

For all its many moments of brilliance, NW ends up seeming not only a portrait of the loss of youthful fearlessness, but also a demonstration of it.